Aftermath
++Aquila-class Shuttle Emperor’s Grace, Denton III++
++3.632.879.M39++
Twilight sighed wearily as she felt the screaming in the Aether slowly fade away from her immediate consciousness. It was not gone, of course, merely leaving the planetary atmosphere would not suffice to escape a wound in the fabric of magic caused by billions of deaths, but it helped ease the pressure. A portion of her strength began to return. As if belatedly catching up to the psychic reality, the shuttle’s atmospheric jerking and kinking finally ceased as the Imperial craft entered the cold void of space.
With barely a conscious thought, Twilight’s horn glowed and her safety harness released itself. She dropped off the uncomfortably human-sized chair, landing easily on all four hooves. Leaving Titus to his brief nap – how he was able to sleep through such turbulence was something Twilight would never understand – the lavender alicorn trotted a few meters to a ladder built into the wall. It was time to indulge in one of the few pleasures that were left to her these days.
Flapping her wings in a well-practiced maneuver, Twilight ascended the small distance to the Aquila’s observation dome. Almost pressing her face to the transparent material protecting her from the vacuum, Twilight stared out into space.
Space was, as always, beautiful to Twilight. Free of the interference from planetary atmosphere, the stars twinkled brightly, like a million million sparkling diamonds spread throughout the night sky. “Oooh, there’s the Soaring Pegasus!” Twilight grinned like an excited little filly as she worked to identify the constellations from her studies back home. “The Crystal Heart! Could that one be…” she pondered for a moment. “The Eyes of Starswirl? Or would it be Celestia’s Gaze that's visible from here? Hmmm…”
Twilight’s stargazing was interrupted when the Emperor’s Grace made a course adjustment, swinging her around to look back at the planet below. Denton III had a murky, reddish-brown tint to its upper atmosphere, a testament to uncounted centuries of hive pollutants destroying whatever natural beauty had once been present. Great machines of the Adeptus Machanicus worked day and night, Twilight knew, keeping the air breathable, but only just. Grey-black clouds covered much of the regions surrounding the hives themselves, blocking even the meager view a person could get through the foggy atmosphere. In the areas somewhat free of such obstructions, one could see the bare bedrock of the planet, interspersed with the green and black remnants of the planet’s oceans. It looked almost as if the apocalypse had already come to the world.
Turning her head to peer around the planet towards the stars again, Twilight caught sight of a tiny speck. Squinting, and casting a cantrip to magnify her vision, she took another look. “It’s a ship. One of ours. It’s… firing?” Twilight took a second look. Sure enough, the starboard broadside cannons unleashed another volley even as she watched. The deadly projectiles angled downwards and disappeared into Denton III’s atmosphere. “Orbital bombardment. They must have located a concentration of Necrons. Or they think they did, at any rate.”
Twilight pulled her gaze from the starship and dismissed her spell. She shook her head. Even after all these years, she had difficulty grasping just how willing the humans were to devastate their already ruined planet solely for the sake of making the invaders suffer. It made little sense to her. “On the other hoof…” Twilight mentally pictured thousands of Necrons on the ground, suddenly being pounded by a force beyond their power to see or fight, smashed and blasted into a molten goo, their pitiful remnants scattering like rats in all directions, terror reaching into their metal minds for the first time in an eternity. She couldn’t help but grin at the thought.
“Maybe I do understand.”
++Lunar-class Cruiser Kyne’s Fury, Orbiting Denton III++
++3.632.879.M39++
“You wished to see me, my Lord?” said Twilight as she walked slowly into an improvised command room, filled with holos and charts and reports.
“Ah, Acolyte,” said Lord Inquisitor Tas Rovini, without turning away from the enormous Warp chart hung from the wall that he was studying. He’d gained the new title – or at least he’d insisted on being known by it – under circumstances he refused to describe two years prior, only a short while before the initial Necron attacks. “I’ve read your initial report. Have you anything to add in person? Any further explanations as to why you’ve come back minus the majority of my men and the target of your mission?”
“Sir,” Twilight began, suppressing the urge to let her emotions show in her voice, “as I stated in my thirty page summary of our mission, the entire situation was clearly meant to be an ambush from the beginning. The “Prophet” was not acting under his own will, and his masters disposed of him rather than allow us to capture him. As I’ve also stated, and trooper Titus can confirm, the xenotech device brought in sufficient Necron soldiers to overwhelm my team in moments. I did everything I could do under the circumstances to withdraw safely, but-”
“I will be the judge of that. Refrain from inserting your opinions into your speech when reporting to me. Is that sufficiently clear?” the Lord Inquisitor interrupted. He still had yet to turn his eyes away from the chart on the wall.
Twilight nodded, repressing a twinge of frustration. “Yes, sir.”
“Good. You may continue.”
“Thank you.” Twilight cleared her throat. “As I was saying, we withdrew with due haste. Bringing the orb with us was no longer feasible once it had been revealed for an enemy teleport homer-”
“You are inserting your opinions again, Acolyte.”
Twilight’s eyes widened briefly before she reasserted her control of them. “Sir, you can’t seriously be suggesting that I should have taken the orb with us while it was spewing Necron solders?!”
“Can’t I?” he said, a slight hint of danger to his voice. “Please do refrain from such outbursts in the future or I may be forced to discipline you.”
Twilight’s ears folded down meekly. Inquisitorial “discipline” was hardly known for its gentle nature. “Yes, my Lord.”
“Do continue,” the old man said, now examining something on a dataslate and looking back and forth between it and the chart.
“We withdrew from the building. By this point, only two of the team that had gone in with me remained. I used magic to teleport us all up to where our sniper was perched. It was my hope to meet up with her for a retreat. However, when we arrived, she was dead and a Necron awaited us. It killed one more man before Titus and I were able to put it down. Then we retreated up for several stories. Our communications were poor, but I was able to contact our Valkyrie and pick up Titus. It took some time, but eventually I got through to Imperial command and alerted them to the Necrons emerging from the building where we had been. That effectively concluded the operation.”
“I see,” came the response. Lord Inquisitor Rovini still had yet to face Twilight, now staring down at a holo-map of the planet and checking his dataslate every few seconds. “Now I shall ask for your opinion, and you have permission to give it. What do you make of what just happened?”
Twilight frowned, choosing her words carefully before answering. “My Lord, this mission strikes me as being highly… strange. Some things don’t make sense.”
“Really?” the Lord Inquisitor said with an air of thoughtfulness. “How so?”
“If they had a teleportation device and they knew we were coming, why spring it there? Why not let us have it, wait for us to take it to somewhere sensitive for study, and then activate it? I don’t mean to denigrate myself or my men, but frankly we were hardly the most strategically valuable targets that trap could have been sprung on. It could have been used on an Adeptus Mechanicus facility, an Inquisition base, or even one of our ships. Bypassing the defense to teleport their soldiers directly into the middle of such soft targets would do far more damage to the war effort than eliminating one single kill team. In light of that, I don’t understand why the ambush happened when it did.”
“You believe we are missing something?”
Twilight nodded, though the old man still hadn’t deigned to look her in the face and presumably couldn’t see the gesture. “Yes. The soldiers may not be very bright, but their commanders seem to have good strategic minds. Why waste this opportunity and risk putting us on alert for the next trap just to destroy my team? There must be a reason, something I’m not seeing.”
“I see. Do you have anything else to add?”
“Yes sir. They knew we were coming, so it is only logical to conclude that our communications systems have been compromised, at the bare minimum. Under a worst case scenario…”
“We have a spy in our ranks,” Lord Inquisitor Rovini finished, finally turning to face his Acolyte. He had a tired, pained look to his face that hadn’t been there all those years ago. “And in my experience, one should always assume the worst until proven otherwise.”
Twilight nodded again. “As you say, my Lord.”
The Lord Inquisitor put his dataslate down on a table and looked Twilight in the eye. “And what do you think is going to happen now?”
Twilight wilted under his stern gaze. Her ears folded back again, and she looked at her own hooves. “I’ll accept whatever punishment you see fit to inflict, my Lord. If I may make a request, please don’t punish Titus. He’s lost enough already.”
“Punish you? I don’t think so. You have done… well, Acolyte.”
Twilight looked up, eyes wide. “But sir, I failed to bring in either the device or the prisoner! I lost almost all my team!”
Lord Inquisitor Rovini waved his hand dismissively. “You lost a handful of lives. In return, you gave me valuable information about enemy strategic priorities and alerted me to a possible compromise of our ranks.”
Twilight’s jaw dropped. “But… but…”
“Most lives are of negligible importance compared to information.” Rovini’s face hardened as he looked at Twilight’s shocked expression. “This is war, Acolyte. That there will be casualties is an inevitable fact. Billions have died already. In this case, a mere handful perished in the line of duty. Is that really so surprising to you?”
Twilight forced her face to resume its neutral pose before responding. “As you say, sir.”
“Yes. Now, I’ll have a new mission for you soon. But you’ll need to replace your lost men before you can complete it. Unfortunately, there are currently no available squads of Inquisitorial Stormtroopers to assign to you. So you will need to conscript some replacements from the ranks of the men on the planet. I shall have a list of noteworthy candidates sent to your quarters. Be swift in choosing. Understood?”
“Yes sir.”
“Good. Report back to me with your replacements in five standard Terran days. You are dismissed.” Lord Inquisitor Rovini turned his back to Twilight once again, retrieving his dataslate from where he’d left it and continuing the task he’d left off. Twilight started towards the door. She hadn’t gotten but a few steps before the Lord Inquisitor spoke once more. “Oh, and Acolyte?”
Twilight turned back around again. “My Lord?”
“Send in my next visitor.”
“As you wish.”
“Good. Dismissed.”
Twilight exited the same thick, sliding portal she’d entered her superior’s office from. The blank-faced Stormtrooper guards watched her passing closely, but said nothing. The lavender alicorn trotted easily over to the next subordinate “invited” to the Lord Inquisitor’s chambers, bile rising to her throat as she did.
“Our Lord Inquisitor wishes to see you now, Interrogator.” Twilight told the woman in carefully controlled tone, staring into her eyes with a hostile look.
The hostility was more than returned. “As you say, Acolyte,” said Interrogator Kylara. She swept toward the chamber immediately, not looking back.
Twilight watched her vanish within, then began to trot towards her quarters. “I have a lot of work to do.”
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neat, i never got to heavy into the lore of 40k so i never really got to see if humanity ever used xenos like they are doing with twilight
4700527 as i understand it, very very rarely. usually in the same way as twilight, ie if an alien is of sufficient tactical value or if they destinguish themselves, they might get recruited by an inquisitor or a rogue trader (since only those two "occupation" are sufficiently powerfull and autonomous enough to do so withought getting called traitors or such) and im pretty sure in dire situations, sufficiently open minded imperial commanders would hire xeno mercenarys like the kroot. But really for the majority of the imperials, if it's blood aint red, burn it till it's dead.
4700527 As far as I know they have never "used" xenos. openly, at least, the jokaero (basically a species that look like hyper intelligent orangutans) make digi weapons for the inquisition, and they send negotiators to deal with tau so they don't have to fight them all the time. Even inquisitor kryptmann used the orks to distract the hive fleet behemoth, so if Rovini was a radical ,and it looks like he is, then it is not too far fetched for an Ordo Xenos inquisitor such as himself to use twilight... and then kill her once she is no longer useful
4700657 but pone blood is red
4701012 doubt it. And even if it is, it probably twinkles like liquid glitter.
4700691
The Inquisition using Twilight, while radical in practice, is not the most radical example of Sanctioning Xenos. There have been instances where groups of Kroot Mercenaries and Ork Kommandos have been Sanctioned by the Inquiistion for use for short periods of time, before they were let go or otherwise disposed of.
Long term Sanctioning of Xenos for service to the Imperium is more common among Rogue Traders operating in expanse territories, and even then it is still frowned upon.
Good chapter again. I look forward to see how the new squad's members' picking will go.
I think I like Rovini - for a member of the Imperium, and an Inquisitor no less, he is surprisingly pragmatic and fair, not just a zealotry driven nutcase. The fact that he acknowledged that Twilight did well for the circumstances, despite how bad the overall mission went (which would be ten times the excuse most everyone would need ... not that they needed one in the first place ... to lash out and blame the xenos), speaks well for his integrity. Could it be that the Imperium has a competent man in charge of something for a change? Blasphemy!
That bit about a potential traitor amidst the Inquisition's ranks got me thinking though, just as Kylara popped back in to the picture to remind us of herself. She would make for a pretty decent candidate for treachery, would she not?
She obviously hates Twilight's guts after all the "humiliation" (ha) she had to "endure" in order to get information out of Twilight during the first fic, and I imagine was looking towards disposing of the alien. And then ... Rovini enlists her help and, over whatever period of time has passed, has made her in to his Accolyte. This, effectively, puts her on equal rank as Kylara and, needless to say, dashes any hopes she would have for "vengeance".
And I imagine that grates her something fierce - that she is "reduced" to the same rank and place as a xenos whom she can do nothing about. For a particularly fanatical member of the Imperium (which is to say, 99% of them), especially a prideful one, that would be like being forced to sit on a chair of burning coals. Even more so if she fancied herself something of a right hand to Rovini, a position she now evidently has to "share" with this little xenos who now personally reports to the Lord Inquisitor.
Oh yes, I could see that bothering her greatly ... perhaps greatly enough for her to try and strike a deal with the enemy, which wold explain why Twilight's squad was targeted specifically - which, Twilight noted, makes no sense on a tactical scale and all the other ways the orb could have been used, to much more destructive effect towards Imperium's war effort.
And I imagine it's not going to get any better for her - with the potential of a spy amongst his closest ranks, I could see Rovini relying more on that one agent of his whose "loyalty" he can be sure of - in so far that she would eat her own heart out before even considering the thought of helping Necrons in any capacity. I can all but feel the potential jealousy over here ...
Or I could be completely out in the left field, has happened before :P
---
That aside, Twilight has done pretty well for herself, hasn't she? A sanctioned Xenos Psyker who has managed to claim the rank of an Accolyte and acts not only without supervision, but also leads her own squad (with the freedom of choosing her own cadre of troops)? I guess this, again, spekas well of Rovini's integrity - harsh or not, he is pragmatic enough to recognize a valuable asset for what it is and utilize it in a way most effective (Twilight has a sharp mind and is a natural organizer, not to mention somewhat experienced at leading things, and comes with a swiss army knife in terms of abilities - which are best put to use when she can plan around them herself and employ as necessary, instead of having to ask for permissions and having others coff at xenos magics or whatever), even though most everyone else would scoff at the idea of a xenos even being in a squad, much less leading it. Good for him.
Looking towards the squad she assembles ... Might a certain group of Astartes and a certain druken, lucky son of a gun be on it? Either way, regardless of who gets picked, I can't wait for their reactions when they are told to report for a new assignment, assemble to meet their new commander ... and Twilight waltzes in
4702708
I love the speculation! While I'm not going to spoil anything, I do feel compelled to step in and issue a minor correction: Interrogator is a step above Acolyte and the rank directly before becoming an Inquisitor. All Kylara needs to get a promotion at this point is Rovini's sponsorship.
4703035
*Scratches head*
Hmm, so it was, my 40k lore is a bit rusty at the moment. Now that I think harder on it, I think Accolyte was the "starting" rank of an agent that an Inquisitor took under his wing, while Interrogator (among a few other ones) were considered an advanced stage, allowed somewhat independent action, right?
Probably doesn't change much about my speculation though - Twilight has still slipped past her grasp (and she can't override any of Rovini's orders anyway, so basically has no authority over Twilight) and the Lord Inquisitor seems to regard her fairly well, and she is still butting in to what used to be (or so it seems) solely Kylara's spot. All of which would still be grating on her a whole lot, I reckon.
4703075
That's more or less correct.
Also, you can tell how long it is between each chapter or event with the handy dandy time stamps I put on top of each chapter or section. That's what they're there for.
4700691
I agree with tat statement, except that Inquisitor kryptmann was excommunicated for his actions.
FYI. It was hive fleet Leviathan, not Behemoth.
Also, he "used" the Orks indirectly. He sent Tyranids to a ork planet so they could kill each other and the Imperium could use the resources elsewhere.
4703075
4703269
Inquisitorial ranks hurt my brain since my brain is hardwired on the 1st Legion (if you don't know what chapter this is than please stop your life and learn 40k lore)
4702708
This is part of why she is an Interrogator instead of an Inquisitor. Inquisitors understand that they don't have a"right hand", they have resources.
Also, really, most of the Imperium isn't fanatical. Oh, sure, the Imperial upper strata and Ecclesiarchy love to spout about the average citizen's zealotry, but really, most of the Imperial citizens are rather jaded and distrustful of their government and of the Ecclesiarchy. Yes, they worship the Emperor. Yes, they go to church (the alternative is execution). However, most are willing to give non-hostile xenos a (albeit wary) chance. Part if this is due to being severely jaded and desensitized to Imperial propaganda over their lifetimes. This, unfortunately, almost always ends in alien invasion where the invaders either enslave you, brainwash you with mind-influencing pheromones or nanites, eat your flesh, eat your soul, suck out your soul for something else to eat, torture you to harvest your psychic pain for sustenance and fun, or countless other horrific ends. On the bright side, this attitude is actually a good thing when they encounter non-hostile xenos (a few dozen species out of tens of thousands of species in the Imperium's entire history). Usually that results in the aliens willingly becoming protectorates of the Imperium for trade and protection. It is kind of encouraging to read that kind of lore and realize that, for all the (brutally necessary) atrocities the Imperium commits, it still has not become a true monster. It still manages to remain human, if barely.